Weekend warrior.

Woe is me! I have to spend half my day sitting around Barnes and Noble today, browsing through books.  My daughter is in the local production of Junie B., Jingle bells, Batman smells! and they are performing from 1-3 to happy book shoppers.  I'm sure I won't leave empty handed and I wish I could take a handful of book bloggers with me! I can think of much worse places to wile away my afternoon.

  A concentration camp would be top on that list after spending several hours in the middle of the night reading the end of Elizabeth Wein's finely crafted historical fiction Rose under fire.  Brutal, well-written, but brutal, brutal, brutal.  The bonds she made in the women's concentration camp carry you through the most horrible descriptions.  I loved Code Name Verity and this is a companion novel, making use of the same war, different setting with kick-ass female characters/heroines and a few carry over characters.  Both Wein's novels and Junie B. have nothing in common except they all feature powerful young women.

A sample:

Rose explains to her boyfriend Nick her aspirations and frustrations:

Finally Nick said sympathetically, “What’s made you so bloodthirsty?”

“I’m not bloodthirsty.  There’s no blood in a pilotless plane, is there? I’m a good pilot.  I’ve probably been flying five years longer than half the boys in 150 Wing.  I flew with Daddy from coast to coast across America when I was fifteen and I did all the navigation.  You’ve never flown a Tempest, or a Mustang, or a Mark Fourteen Spitfire-I’ve flown them all, dozens of times.  They’re wasting me just because I’m a girl!  They won’t even let us fly to France-they’re prepping men for supply and taxi to the front lines, guys with hundreds’ fewer hours than me, but they’re just passing over the women pilots.  It isn’t fair.” (14)

Have a happy Saturday.  Here in Iowa it is a gorgeous day outside and I have to finish cleaning up my garden.